Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that Vice President Kamala Harris could not connect one American to the Internet as the “broadband czar.”
Trump said at a rally in Uniondale, New York:
In 2021, Joe Biden tasked Kamala Harris with bringing broadband to rural America — rural America was dying for it — and gave her $42 billion to do the job. Three years later, right now, not a single home has been connected to broadband. Everybody is saying, “What happened to the money?” $42 billion, not one home.
Trump’s comments about Harris’s failure to connect Americans with broadband follows a Senate Republican letter — led by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Senate Republican whip — to Harris about her failure to connect Americans to the Internet.
In the letter, the Senate Republicans say her job as the “broadband czar” was as disastrous as her job as the “border czar.”
Thune told Breitbart News in a statement on Friday that Trump’s policies helped boost Internet access.
“Broadband Czar Kamala Harris has spent the last three years sitting on 42 billion in taxpayer dollars for broadband expansion and has not connected a single person to the Internet. During the Trump administration, red tape and bureaucratic delays were slashed, which created opportunities for massive Internet expansion,” Thune told Breitbart News in a written statement.
As Breitbart News has reported, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program has been weighed down by progressive mandates, including:
- Onerous labor requirements that “actively” discriminate against workers in a way that could “deny communities — particularly those in rural areas — access to reliable broadband services.”
- Encouraging government-owned networks over private investment.
- Prohibiting non-fiber optic projects from receiving BEAD funding, prioritizing fiber optic cable deployment over wireless Internet deployment.
- Mandates for affordability and rate regulation. The confusion over how to comply with this rule led to a significant delay in Virginia’s BEAD broadband deployment.
- Eligible projects must account for “climate-related” risks, which were not included in the infrastructure bill text.
- The Biden-Harris administration has an inconsistent waiver process to ensure speedy deployment for the purchasing of broadband products and supplies from American workers and businesses.
Thune concluded in his statement to Breitbart News, “Broadband Czar Harris has unfortunately taken a much different approach and is pushing a number of liberal wish-list items that would leave unserved communities further in the dust. The $42 billion question is: ‘How can Americans trust Vice President Harris to lead any effort?’”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
